Wireless communication networks are known. In a cellular system, radio coverage is provided to user equipment, for example, mobile telephones, by geographical area. Those geographical areas of radio coverage are known as cells. A base station is located in each geographical area to provide the required radio coverage. A base station may support more than one cell providing coverage in the same geographical area. User equipment in the area served by a base station receives information and data from that base station and transmits information and data to that base station.
Information and data transmitted by a base station to user equipment occurs on channels of radio carriers known as downlink carriers. Information and data transmitted by user equipment to a base station occurs on uplink channels of radio carriers known as uplink carriers.
In wireless communication networks user equipment can move between geographical base station coverage areas. Active services provided to user equipment are typically overseen by a radio network controller (RNC). The RNC communicates with user equipment and base stations and determines which base station each user equipment is to be primarily connected to. Furthermore, the RNC acts to control and communicate with base stations and user equipment when user equipment moves from a geographical area served by one base station to a geographical area served by another base station or between cells or sectors served by the same base station. RNC management of cell loading occurs when the user equipment is operating in a connected radio resource control (RRC) state.
User equipment may operate in various modes in, for example, a UMTS communications network. On initial turning on of user equipment within a cell it will typically operate in an idle mode. Once it synchronises and attaches itself to a base station it gains radio resource control (RRC) connection and may be referred to, in some of those RRC states as being in connected mode. Mobile terminals in wireless networks predominantly have two modes of operation as outlined above; that is to say, connected mode or unconnected mode also known as “idle mode”.
In order to transition from idle to connected mode, a user equipment will normally gain access to the network via the RRC connection establishment procedure, which is initiated by the user equipment (UE) sending an RRC Connection Request message to an RNC/eNode B (base station that is connected to the mobile network and communicates directly with the user equipment) respectively. Typically the RNC/eNode B will respond to confirm the establishment of an RRC connection between the RNC/eNode B and the UE. However there are circumstances whereby the network (RNC/eNode B) can reject the RRC Connection Request from the UE. As part of the rejection the network is able to provide a “wait time” to the UE, which defines the time period the UE has to wait before repeating the rejected procedure. One consequence of the network rejecting a RRC Connection Request and providing a wait time is that whilst the wait time is running in the UE (which can be up to 15 seconds) the UE doesn't respond to any paging requests.
In addition, in UMTS the RNC can also provide a wait time when responding to a Cell Update procedure from a UE.
For delay tolerant access (which is intended for low priority accesses, typically MTC Machine type communication devices such as Smart Meters) the 3GPP RAN2 standards working group has also defined an extended wait time IE (of up to 30 minutes). Whilst this extended wait time is running in the UE, this ‘wait’ is only applicable for delay tolerant calls and therefore the UE can respond to any received paging requests and the timer is stopped.
Therefore there is an inconsistency between how a UE reacts to receiving an RRC message containing a wait time and one with an extended wait time, which can lead to problems.
It would be desirable for UEs in a wait or extended wait period to respond to paging requests in a similar way. In particular, it would be advantageous if lower priority devices in an extended wait time were not more reactive to certain paging requests than higher priority devices that have shorter wait times.